They also didn't object, because was resonably careful. He didn't discuss whether the Earth or the Sun is the center of the universe. He just promoted a useful "mathematical trick" - if you base the calculations on the position of the Sun rather than the Earth, the calculations are simpler. Worded like this, the theory was useful and didn't contradict anything. Of course, the simpler calculations may suggest that the central Sun might be more than just a trick, but Copernicus didn't really advocate adapting that view. Why should he - he wasn't studying the structure of the universe as such, he just wanted to simplify calculations in astronomy.
Actually, this is a good approach to science. If some model gives simpler results, it's certainly worth using, but that doesn't mean its how reality works. As we learn, we can begin to treat the good models as "real", but they are still just models and defending them against contradicting experiments wouldn't be scientific. Look at the quantum theories - the main criteria for selection of the good ones are "do the results agree with experiments" and "is it simple enough, with nice symmetries etc." - we still don't know enough to claim that one is "closer to reality" than the other.
According to the RFC leading zeros specify octal and 0x is hexadecimal. Both are standard, but rarely used and not all programs support them. There are even more ways to write an IP address, including dword and different mixes, but they are usually only used for obfuscation in malware.
That's the bigger crime here, sure, but I don't agree with you - it's not just/. skew. The assault part of the case is simply not that interesting - a routine charge. The important fact is, that while no "real" property was stolen, the attack was classified as robbery. In other words, they got punished for both assault and theft.
IMO this is important, because it opens the path for prosecution of virtual theft, even if not accompanied by assault. In other words, the judges seem ready to treat hacking an account to transfer gold or whatever not just as illegal access to the account, but also as theft.
Funny how you got so emotional about percieved lack of logic instead of applying it yourself. I know it's sometimes difficult to understand written text, but please, at least make an effort.
Where in TFA is it written that this formation prevents feeding? They simply state that this formation doesn't seem to make feeding easier or more efficient, more probably less so. This is a reason to rule out feeding as the cause for this formation. That's it, that's all they are saying.
The formation might be useful for something else - they suggest defence during migration - and that advantage probably offsets the small or nonexistent difficulties during feeding.
Learn the three Rs: reread, rethink, repeat. If the problem persists after a few iterations, then rant. Please.
Something terrible is like a miracle to politicians, a breath of fresh air. It's difficult to force some things while the nation watches, but something terrible will spark emotions and emotions are great waves to surf on. You can push the wierdest things if you justify them as reaction to something as long as sufficiently strong emotions are associated with that something. And even if you don't, you can use that wave to propel you to greater power - nothing better for the current ruler than a catastrophy just before election. Unless the ruler can't react quickly enough, that's his problem: his opponents will surely use that.
That's why you got so many freedom-restricting laws just after 9/11. That's why you hear such a lot about pedophilia. That's why anything you see in the papers with sufficient emotional comments will cause governmental action, even if it actually makes things worse.
So, what terrible thing did you mean? Innocent people suffering? Already happened and can be used to advantage - out troops still don't have enough information, causing false positives, more snooping is necessary to Protect Innocent Citizens!
What else? Revolution? Even bigger emotions, even better situation. Sure, your current government would collapse, but the revolution tends to give power to people with results, not visions, and in effect often lands with ruthless dictators in power. USSR - product of a revolution. Robespierre's terror in France - product of a revolution.
That's the problem with masses. Usually they sleep, but if you wake them up, they tend to demand action, but think even less. The trick is to create a slow push. React to small incidents. Mobilize people separately for every small battle. Make them write to their representatives. Make them answer the difficult questions: "Do you know what your representative's position was on (...)? And on (...)? So, would you vote for him again?" Make them feel that they are losing something and push for changes, then hope that a good group of leaders forms. Then they can take over and fix things.
Remeber - the old America didn't become great because of a revolution. It had good leaders. Without them the results would be the same as with most revolutions. Have a vision and good people in charge before you even start, or you're risking everything.
So - this situation can only be fixed by politicians, but you need new ones. Completely new ones. And the sad thing is: with such a strictly bipartisan system, with most citizens confident that any third party is a waste of a vote, you're not going to get any. Sorry.
Good solution, just throw in an external laptop-sized battery, giving the phone/keyboard/screen combo uptime measured in weeks. I'd buy it - light, functional, charge when you remember... perfect for most tasks.
Not only that. Having a general purpose operating system gives you a choice you wouldn't otherwise have - using applications that the designers didn't consider. I know I'd like a laptop with 20+ hours on a normal battery, but it would have to have at least ssh (works on my phone, so obviously not a problem), and something to edit text (LaTeX, docs, sometimes simple programs - vi or something else that doesn't need much processor power). I could do 80% of my everyday work with this. And if after a few hours of work I could boot to full power to e.g. compile the text - even better. Now, what are the chances that these applications would be installed in an "email/web" mode? With Linux I can just install what I need and - as long as it doesn't need much to run - it'll work just fine.
OR it will force users back to IE. No, really: imagine you're the webmaster. If you use a self-signed cert and your user can't connect and asks for help, what will you do? Buy a cert? Why? Give advice? Sure, but users won't follow even three steps if it "looks complicated". Simplest option is to say "Use IE". Great, we're back to where WWW has been a few years before - creating a niche for which you "have to" use IE anyway, so why switch.
FF is shooting itself in the foot. Especially with self-signed certs - expired ones should be treated much less kindly, but this is too much even in this case.
Another example of idealistic but misguided approach to security - Opera mail client + SSL/TLS. For oh-so-many versions I've been MAD about one thing: every time I started Opera I got a warning that certificates for two mail servers at work had a short RSA key - half of suggested length. No way to say "I know, but I'm not the admin and the ticket got a WONTFIX (until it expires), so stop bugging me already"! I was getting more and more irritated, until finally Opera won. I turned off SSL completely. I switched from hoping that I'm not interesting enough for anybody to try to hack a less-than-suggested encrypted connection to hoping that I'm not interesting enough to snoop on at all. Is THAT better? I think they finally understood the problem, as the newest version allowed me to install the certificate and ignore the short key.
Make sure that your users can tell a really secure connection from an unsecure one. Make that lock icon more visible, or make a big lock symbol flash on the screen for a moment (maybe over the menu so that JavaScript can't simulate it) after establishing a connection. Do everything to make people expect certain behaviour from a secure site and notice when it doesn't happen. But blocking content because you think it's not secure only makes sense if you're consistent and block the completely unencrypted connections as well. Can't do that? So don't do it at all.
I have voted, you know. So what? It's not like this is the type of action you see in your candidate's program - how could I have known if he's going to vote for or against something like that? If I had known he would vote for it, I wouldn't have voted for him.
That's the problem with indirect democracy - there is now way to know what to ask. You judge the cadidates by the things you think are important, but then something new comes up and they surprise you. Anyway, the only effect of knowing in advance every possible decision the candidate would make if elected would be an even more difficult decision - there are too many decisions to be made, there's just no way I could find a candidate I could fully agree with. So, do I care more about social decisions, anti/pro-monopoly stance, or maybe privacy laws... Tough.
What American paper? How are "people who don't live here, most of whom have never visited here" suddenly expected to know what NPR is? The original paper in Nature used Celsius.
This is/., read all around the world. American-centric - maybe, and that's fine. But you have to realize that people around the world are not used to dealing with two systems for temperature. When I see 70 degrees I don't think "but is it Fahrenheit" - instead, the first thing that came to my mind was: that would be way too hot, so they must mean that they grow leaves at 70 degrees angle to control the effects of sunlight somehow. But this is BS, there's no such rule! What the hell do they mean? Then it hit me - there's another scale...
I have no "feeling" of the Fahrenheit scale. Why should I? I hardly ever see it. Finding out that 70F=21C requires a visit to google, without it I'd be at a loss, as I don't remember the exact value of 0F in centigrade or just how much is 1F. I'll do this, no problem - this is mostly an American site and I'm willing to accept that - but at least let me know I have to do it.
On an international site I'd actually expect to see both values in the summary, giving one is still acceptable, but giving one without units is just ridiculous.
You say "And the rest of the world calls us arrogant." Yes, and -judging from your rant - rightly so.
Exactly. Another useless fragmentation of effort. Where's the idea of "the Grid"? A single entity, like the Internet, where you can put your computations and get a lot of cycles, and if people actually find your research interesting - well, you get more cycles[*] than supercomputers can give you. Look at the numbers for BOINC or folding@home - for quite some time now they are consistently getting more FLOPS than TOP500 #1 supercomputer at the time.
[*] If that is all you need. Supercomputers still are way better if your problem doesn't split nicely into portions - grids are more or less useless in this case.
I completely understand why folding@home didn't join BOINC - they have specialized GPU and PS3-based clients. They are less popular than PC(Win+Mac/x86+Mac/PowerPC+Linux), but boy are they worth it! There is 5 times as many f@h PC clients than PS3, but the PS3s give almost 80% of TFLOPS. The GPU clients are rare, but they give even more power per client than PS3.
So, by being specialized, folding@home gets loads of computing power (slowly getting to 2 PFLOPS!) that BOINC couldn't really get at. But what exactly is this Nightlife for? Fedora-specific grid? Geez... Just make a team in BOINC, help make BOINC better, if you like. Don't fragment the grid!
There's physical access and physical access. If you are alone in the room with the computer for a long time, with no risk of anyone seeing you, then yes, you've won. But in a busy room - that's a bit different. An unknown person trying to open the case, or doing something else which looks "different" seems is easy to spot, but in many cases an unknown person doing things which look normal will be ignored - probably just a new guy. With this kind of exploit you just need seconds without being watched: pop a CD into the drive, reboot. If you are well prepared, the CD will not boot a full Linux system, it'll just mount the first partition which looks like Vista, rename the file, eject the CD and reboot. Hide the CD in your pocket and sit down. You don't look suspicious now, you're just a guy waiting for his machine to boot. Now you need a few seconds again to "log-in" - launch the cmd.exe, run explorer, launch IE ar whatever... Everything looks normal now. If you are calm and look bored, you can now browse away all you like - read all files on the disk, do what you want to the system, copy the files, etc. Then just get up and leave. Yes, you need guts to do this, but if you're playing with social engineering (how else did you get to sit in that room unattended?) then you have plenty of that.
Besides, you can be there legitimately. You may even have an account on the machine. Employees, contractors, etc. can also be attackers. This way they have a simple, fast and reliable privilege escalation ability.
Anything that makes breaking security with physical access faster and relatively inconspicious is a threat. So, yeah, restrict physical access all you want, but since this is never foolproof... If it's sensitive, it should be encrypted, period.
Sure, that may be right. But what do you do with a new computer, especially a used one? Scan with an antivirus to make sure it is clean. If you're going to play safe, you may wipe it clean and install a new, ultra-secure OS.
Now you feel safe, now you can enter a CC number or password... but guess what - it's still not clean, BIOS was switched by the previous owner or someone who had physical access to the machine before it was sold. How do you detect this? If you can make the system log keystrokes in a completely undetectable way and send collected information somehow, you have a perfect trap. And that's the idea about this attack - not infecting an existing system, but setting a trap for later use. This could be done without such tricks, but extra hardware might be noticed. This solution doesn't introduce any new hardware.
OK, but why would a spokesperson point that out? In my opinion the title is misleading. This is not an admission, this is rational damage control. Diebold is in the ATM market, sells the expensive machines to banks. The problems with voting security are having a bad effect on the company's image. The market for voting machines is still unsure, so staying in the ATM market is more important for the bottom line. So, what do you do? You say to your customers "hey, we can make our products very secure, but you get what you pay for! Disregard the e-voting controversy, dear customer, you pay us enough to get the best solutions!".
Anti-counterfeit measures work well enough on many currencies, but with US dollars it's rather difficult. The new dollars are good enough, but the problem stems from the fact that demonetization is currently prohibited in the USA and even very old banknotes are legal tender. It's a problem in banks around the world - you have to learn to look for giveaways on several versions of each note, and the old ones are not very well protected. It's a tradeoff - you get more counterfeit money in circulation, but you also get a certainty that money stored in a box somewhere (or in a bank's vault) will still be good for e.g. a/. subscription after many years.
If you touch-type, then something like a halfkeyboard (http://www.matias.ca/halfkeyboard/) might help - I've never tried it, but it looks useful for something like that. I also remember another keyboard from times long past - 6 or 7 keys (plus additional ones for special keys), only the thumb moves, all characters are "chords". That looked like a nice toy, perhaps practical. I don't know if there's anything like that now. Still, I don't think it's a good idea to multitask while driving. Too many accidents happen because of that. You may be able to drive with no problems, but your response time in a critical situation may increase significantly.
If you hunt and peck, then typing while driving is very dangerous and you shouldn't try it. Multitasking is one thing, but spending half the time not looking at the road ahead can kill. Sure, on an isolated empty highway it may be rather safe, but otherwise you never know - a child may run in front of you, the driver ahead of you may hit the brakes suddenly for a reason you can't see (for example, he just noticed a hole in the road big enough to tear off the wheels - happened to me once, the car behind almost hit me)... Just don't do that.
Exactly. An all-out patent war with IBM and others would be Bad for Business (so expect at least the issues with Linux kernel to be resolved quickly and with full cooperation from MS). The goal is not to damage any of the projects now - they're just trying to plant a fact as an axis for the FUD levers later. The SCO attack was based on accusations and failed, so the public reaction to new accusations would be dampened now. A well published fact - patent issues in OSS - would shift the initiative back to Microsoft.
I think you missed the point of this game. Given the size of MS pool of patents this set is ridiculously small. I think the ones they selected are pretty bulletproof and - surprisingly - that this won't be a legal war of attrition, MS will play nice about it. Why? Because this is just a battle in a PR war, a strategic attack. This is not meant to harm OSS directly - it's a preparation for a major offensive and will be fought without determination, since a minor victory, not a real triumph, is all MS needs.
I think this is a small step in a FUD campaign, a kind of damage control. The SCO FUD is grinding to a halt and likely to backfire. The reason is simple: nonobvious copyright infringement is quite hard to prove and unlikely to be ubiquitous in OSS. The outcome of the SCO case may convince users that OSS is reasonably free of IP problems. MS has to act now, proactively.
This new case will be pushed to the media. It'll linger for some time. MS won't disclose the patents too quickly, waiting for satisfactory media coverage. Finally they will, and then MS will be very reasonable - first they'll just want compensation (we can see that already), then they may even choose to donate some of the patent rights to OSS. No real harm done, end of story. But the PR effects will be great for MS:
Most of the disclosed patents will be dealt with using workarounds, others will be donated. MS defended its rights, acted benevolent and the problems were solved. PR effect: Bully? Who, us?
The story is public. The workarounds etc. will be a proof that OSS was infringing. And that's not just Linux - the patents they chose hit many projects, and MS is doing everything to make sure it gets noticed (that's why they publish these numbers instead of listing the patents). PR effect: IP violations in OSS are a fact.
Now MS will explain why the set of patents was so small compared to the number of patents owned by the company - they weren't really trying, these were just the cases they spotted almost by accident. This will be hard to argue with, especially if they keep a few identified patents secret and show them as further proof if challenged. PR effect: OSS is in violation of IP rights and the scale of the problem is difficult to estimate.
For a moment MS threatened that they might go after the users. This will be remembered as a possibility. PR effect: Other companies might actually do it in the future.
So, just as copyright FUD started by SCO is dying, MS is preparing an exhibit A for further FUD campaign, a proof that at least patent infringement is a real problem in OSS and a basis for the line "there are IP issues in OSS and sometime, someone might go after YOU, the user, and noone will be able to help you".
In short: a lot of the patents are probably rock solid, and the fact that OSS can work around them should not make you think this case is not a serious problem. Who will invest a sum of money comparable to the MS PR budget in a media campaign showing just how easy it was to deal with the patent issues?
Free speech is a good thing, sure. But the point is: there are cases where current European laws fail. Poland has this problem with a fascist organization called (I think) Redwatch. They have a webpage listing "enemies of the race". Photos, addresses, warnings if they can be dangerous in a fight, etc. How can you get on that list? Simple - promote tolerance, be active, be a member of a homosexual organization, etc. Lately an entire group of pupils of a school landed on the list for cleaning an old jewish cemetary.
People from this list were already attacked, landed in hospitals with knife wounds. The page must disappear - but how would you go about removing it, when no law obligates the providers to do so? They removed it once, it reappeared on another server.
This is exactly the sort of problems this law is supposed to fix. However, the exact wording of any law limiting the freedom of speech is extremely important and side effects can be extremely bad. We'll see...
Thus the water moves almost as a single block, the force itself being only limited by the speed of light (ideally).
Umm... With water, I think you mean the speed of sound. That's - by definition - the speed of an acoustic (i.e. mechanical) wave, the speed at which pressure changes propagate in a given substance. The speed of sound in water is quite high, but not quite the same order of magnitude as the speed of light. An electron, with its charge, is a quite different beast.
The plug won't work on any bathtubs or sinks I've seen here. They all have a second, upper drain to prevent overflow (and make it possible to remove a plug with broken chain with a full bathtub), which doesn't have a plug nad is often shaped in a way that makes it almost impossible to cover it well.
Depends on the U-bend. At work we have a drain in the toilet floor for easier cleaning and in case of a spill (typical, isn't it). It has a very flat U-bend. In the summer it takes about two-three days for it to evaporate if the cleaners sweep the floors with too little water (ecological, right?) It often reeks, usually on Mondays. Solution - go there with a glass and pour some water.
And I use Opera 8.54. I also didn't see this tag. That's the trouble with XML as such, I think. You can put anything you want in some tag, but how can you tell if the receiver will see it, if you don't know the client software?
Slashdot isn't responsible for the limitations of a browser, true. But it is responsible for the quality of the articles (yeah, yeah, "you must be new here" - no, I'm not). It has now been pointed out, that although the humorous nature of this article was in fact sent in the feed, the form was not sufficient - multiple clients ignore the field. If something like that happens to me, I try to fix the problem, even if I feel it's not really my fault (and it does happen when you work with other people). Fault is not the issue, function is.
So, I'm convinced now that Slashdot did include the "laugh, it's funny" information in the feed, even though I have to take your word for it. Nevertheless it did not reach me, and not due to my own carelessness. So, I still think that SOME kind of notification in the RSS body is necessary. I also think that this is getting way too offtopic, so I think it's time to end this thre
Slashdot Mirror
They also didn't object, because was resonably careful. He didn't discuss whether the Earth or the Sun is the center of the universe. He just promoted a useful "mathematical trick" - if you base the calculations on the position of the Sun rather than the Earth, the calculations are simpler. Worded like this, the theory was useful and didn't contradict anything. Of course, the simpler calculations may suggest that the central Sun might be more than just a trick, but Copernicus didn't really advocate adapting that view. Why should he - he wasn't studying the structure of the universe as such, he just wanted to simplify calculations in astronomy.
Actually, this is a good approach to science. If some model gives simpler results, it's certainly worth using, but that doesn't mean its how reality works. As we learn, we can begin to treat the good models as "real", but they are still just models and defending them against contradicting experiments wouldn't be scientific. Look at the quantum theories - the main criteria for selection of the good ones are "do the results agree with experiments" and "is it simple enough, with nice symmetries etc." - we still don't know enough to claim that one is "closer to reality" than the other.
According to the RFC leading zeros specify octal and 0x is hexadecimal. Both are standard, but rarely used and not all programs support them. There are even more ways to write an IP address, including dword and different mixes, but they are usually only used for obfuscation in malware.
That's the bigger crime here, sure, but I don't agree with you - it's not just /. skew. The assault part of the case is simply not that interesting - a routine charge. The important fact is, that while no "real" property was stolen, the attack was classified as robbery. In other words, they got punished for both assault and theft.
IMO this is important, because it opens the path for prosecution of virtual theft, even if not accompanied by assault. In other words, the judges seem ready to treat hacking an account to transfer gold or whatever not just as illegal access to the account, but also as theft.
Funny how you got so emotional about percieved lack of logic instead of applying it yourself. I know it's sometimes difficult to understand written text, but please, at least make an effort.
Where in TFA is it written that this formation prevents feeding? They simply state that this formation doesn't seem to make feeding easier or more efficient, more probably less so. This is a reason to rule out feeding as the cause for this formation. That's it, that's all they are saying.
The formation might be useful for something else - they suggest defence during migration - and that advantage probably offsets the small or nonexistent difficulties during feeding.
Learn the three Rs: reread, rethink, repeat. If the problem persists after a few iterations, then rant. Please.
Something terrible? Wrong idea.
Something terrible is like a miracle to politicians, a breath of fresh air. It's difficult to force some things while the nation watches, but something terrible will spark emotions and emotions are great waves to surf on. You can push the wierdest things if you justify them as reaction to something as long as sufficiently strong emotions are associated with that something. And even if you don't, you can use that wave to propel you to greater power - nothing better for the current ruler than a catastrophy just before election. Unless the ruler can't react quickly enough, that's his problem: his opponents will surely use that.
That's why you got so many freedom-restricting laws just after 9/11. That's why you hear such a lot about pedophilia. That's why anything you see in the papers with sufficient emotional comments will cause governmental action, even if it actually makes things worse.
So, what terrible thing did you mean? Innocent people suffering? Already happened and can be used to advantage - out troops still don't have enough information, causing false positives, more snooping is necessary to Protect Innocent Citizens!
What else? Revolution? Even bigger emotions, even better situation. Sure, your current government would collapse, but the revolution tends to give power to people with results, not visions, and in effect often lands with ruthless dictators in power. USSR - product of a revolution. Robespierre's terror in France - product of a revolution.
That's the problem with masses. Usually they sleep, but if you wake them up, they tend to demand action, but think even less. The trick is to create a slow push. React to small incidents. Mobilize people separately for every small battle. Make them write to their representatives. Make them answer the difficult questions: "Do you know what your representative's position was on (...)? And on (...)? So, would you vote for him again?" Make them feel that they are losing something and push for changes, then hope that a good group of leaders forms. Then they can take over and fix things.
Remeber - the old America didn't become great because of a revolution. It had good leaders. Without them the results would be the same as with most revolutions. Have a vision and good people in charge before you even start, or you're risking everything.
So - this situation can only be fixed by politicians, but you need new ones. Completely new ones. And the sad thing is: with such a strictly bipartisan system, with most citizens confident that any third party is a waste of a vote, you're not going to get any. Sorry.
Good solution, just throw in an external laptop-sized battery, giving the phone/keyboard/screen combo uptime measured in weeks. I'd buy it - light, functional, charge when you remember... perfect for most tasks.
Not only that. Having a general purpose operating system gives you a choice you wouldn't otherwise have - using applications that the designers didn't consider. I know I'd like a laptop with 20+ hours on a normal battery, but it would have to have at least ssh (works on my phone, so obviously not a problem), and something to edit text (LaTeX, docs, sometimes simple programs - vi or something else that doesn't need much processor power). I could do 80% of my everyday work with this. And if after a few hours of work I could boot to full power to e.g. compile the text - even better. Now, what are the chances that these applications would be installed in an "email/web" mode? With Linux I can just install what I need and - as long as it doesn't need much to run - it'll work just fine.
OR it will force users back to IE. No, really: imagine you're the webmaster. If you use a self-signed cert and your user can't connect and asks for help, what will you do? Buy a cert? Why? Give advice? Sure, but users won't follow even three steps if it "looks complicated". Simplest option is to say "Use IE". Great, we're back to where WWW has been a few years before - creating a niche for which you "have to" use IE anyway, so why switch.
FF is shooting itself in the foot. Especially with self-signed certs - expired ones should be treated much less kindly, but this is too much even in this case.
Another example of idealistic but misguided approach to security - Opera mail client + SSL/TLS. For oh-so-many versions I've been MAD about one thing: every time I started Opera I got a warning that certificates for two mail servers at work had a short RSA key - half of suggested length. No way to say "I know, but I'm not the admin and the ticket got a WONTFIX (until it expires), so stop bugging me already"! I was getting more and more irritated, until finally Opera won. I turned off SSL completely. I switched from hoping that I'm not interesting enough for anybody to try to hack a less-than-suggested encrypted connection to hoping that I'm not interesting enough to snoop on at all. Is THAT better? I think they finally understood the problem, as the newest version allowed me to install the certificate and ignore the short key.
Make sure that your users can tell a really secure connection from an unsecure one. Make that lock icon more visible, or make a big lock symbol flash on the screen for a moment (maybe over the menu so that JavaScript can't simulate it) after establishing a connection. Do everything to make people expect certain behaviour from a secure site and notice when it doesn't happen. But blocking content because you think it's not secure only makes sense if you're consistent and block the completely unencrypted connections as well. Can't do that? So don't do it at all.
Hmm... Distant planet, roughly earthlike, but with about 2x the gravity... I heard something about that...
Ha! Find out if it has two moons, I believe we found Pyrrus!
I have voted, you know. So what? It's not like this is the type of action you see in your candidate's program - how could I have known if he's going to vote for or against something like that? If I had known he would vote for it, I wouldn't have voted for him.
That's the problem with indirect democracy - there is now way to know what to ask. You judge the cadidates by the things you think are important, but then something new comes up and they surprise you. Anyway, the only effect of knowing in advance every possible decision the candidate would make if elected would be an even more difficult decision - there are too many decisions to be made, there's just no way I could find a candidate I could fully agree with. So, do I care more about social decisions, anti/pro-monopoly stance, or maybe privacy laws... Tough.
What American paper? How are "people who don't live here, most of whom have never visited here" suddenly expected to know what NPR is? The original paper in Nature used Celsius.
This is /., read all around the world. American-centric - maybe, and that's fine. But you have to realize that people around the world are not used to dealing with two systems for temperature. When I see 70 degrees I don't think "but is it Fahrenheit" - instead, the first thing that came to my mind was: that would be way too hot, so they must mean that they grow leaves at 70 degrees angle to control the effects of sunlight somehow. But this is BS, there's no such rule! What the hell do they mean? Then it hit me - there's another scale...
I have no "feeling" of the Fahrenheit scale. Why should I? I hardly ever see it. Finding out that 70F=21C requires a visit to google, without it I'd be at a loss, as I don't remember the exact value of 0F in centigrade or just how much is 1F. I'll do this, no problem - this is mostly an American site and I'm willing to accept that - but at least let me know I have to do it.
On an international site I'd actually expect to see both values in the summary, giving one is still acceptable, but giving one without units is just ridiculous.
You say "And the rest of the world calls us arrogant." Yes, and -judging from your rant - rightly so.
Exactly. Another useless fragmentation of effort. Where's the idea of "the Grid"? A single entity, like the Internet, where you can put your computations and get a lot of cycles, and if people actually find your research interesting - well, you get more cycles[*] than supercomputers can give you. Look at the numbers for BOINC or folding@home - for quite some time now they are consistently getting more FLOPS than TOP500 #1 supercomputer at the time.
[*] If that is all you need. Supercomputers still are way better if your problem doesn't split nicely into portions - grids are more or less useless in this case.
I completely understand why folding@home didn't join BOINC - they have specialized GPU and PS3-based clients. They are less popular than PC(Win+Mac/x86+Mac/PowerPC+Linux), but boy are they worth it! There is 5 times as many f@h PC clients than PS3, but the PS3s give almost 80% of TFLOPS. The GPU clients are rare, but they give even more power per client than PS3.
So, by being specialized, folding@home gets loads of computing power (slowly getting to 2 PFLOPS!) that BOINC couldn't really get at. But what exactly is this Nightlife for? Fedora-specific grid? Geez... Just make a team in BOINC, help make BOINC better, if you like. Don't fragment the grid!
There's physical access and physical access. If you are alone in the room with the computer for a long time, with no risk of anyone seeing you, then yes, you've won. But in a busy room - that's a bit different. An unknown person trying to open the case, or doing something else which looks "different" seems is easy to spot, but in many cases an unknown person doing things which look normal will be ignored - probably just a new guy. With this kind of exploit you just need seconds without being watched: pop a CD into the drive, reboot. If you are well prepared, the CD will not boot a full Linux system, it'll just mount the first partition which looks like Vista, rename the file, eject the CD and reboot. Hide the CD in your pocket and sit down. You don't look suspicious now, you're just a guy waiting for his machine to boot. Now you need a few seconds again to "log-in" - launch the cmd.exe, run explorer, launch IE ar whatever... Everything looks normal now. If you are calm and look bored, you can now browse away all you like - read all files on the disk, do what you want to the system, copy the files, etc. Then just get up and leave. Yes, you need guts to do this, but if you're playing with social engineering (how else did you get to sit in that room unattended?) then you have plenty of that.
Besides, you can be there legitimately. You may even have an account on the machine. Employees, contractors, etc. can also be attackers. This way they have a simple, fast and reliable privilege escalation ability.
Anything that makes breaking security with physical access faster and relatively inconspicious is a threat. So, yeah, restrict physical access all you want, but since this is never foolproof... If it's sensitive, it should be encrypted, period.
Sure, that may be right. But what do you do with a new computer, especially a used one? Scan with an antivirus to make sure it is clean. If you're going to play safe, you may wipe it clean and install a new, ultra-secure OS.
Now you feel safe, now you can enter a CC number or password... but guess what - it's still not clean, BIOS was switched by the previous owner or someone who had physical access to the machine before it was sold. How do you detect this? If you can make the system log keystrokes in a completely undetectable way and send collected information somehow, you have a perfect trap. And that's the idea about this attack - not infecting an existing system, but setting a trap for later use. This could be done without such tricks, but extra hardware might be noticed. This solution doesn't introduce any new hardware.
Where were the computers at your company built?
OK, but why would a spokesperson point that out? In my opinion the title is misleading. This is not an admission, this is rational damage control. Diebold is in the ATM market, sells the expensive machines to banks. The problems with voting security are having a bad effect on the company's image. The market for voting machines is still unsure, so staying in the ATM market is more important for the bottom line. So, what do you do? You say to your customers "hey, we can make our products very secure, but you get what you pay for! Disregard the e-voting controversy, dear customer, you pay us enough to get the best solutions!".
PR stuff, nothing to see here, move along.
Anti-counterfeit measures work well enough on many currencies, but with US dollars it's rather difficult. The new dollars are good enough, but the problem stems from the fact that demonetization is currently prohibited in the USA and even very old banknotes are legal tender. It's a problem in banks around the world - you have to learn to look for giveaways on several versions of each note, and the old ones are not very well protected. It's a tradeoff - you get more counterfeit money in circulation, but you also get a certainty that money stored in a box somewhere (or in a bank's vault) will still be good for e.g. a /. subscription after many years.
If you touch-type, then something like a halfkeyboard (http://www.matias.ca/halfkeyboard/) might help - I've never tried it, but it looks useful for something like that. I also remember another keyboard from times long past - 6 or 7 keys (plus additional ones for special keys), only the thumb moves, all characters are "chords". That looked like a nice toy, perhaps practical. I don't know if there's anything like that now. Still, I don't think it's a good idea to multitask while driving. Too many accidents happen because of that. You may be able to drive with no problems, but your response time in a critical situation may increase significantly.
If you hunt and peck, then typing while driving is very dangerous and you shouldn't try it. Multitasking is one thing, but spending half the time not looking at the road ahead can kill. Sure, on an isolated empty highway it may be rather safe, but otherwise you never know - a child may run in front of you, the driver ahead of you may hit the brakes suddenly for a reason you can't see (for example, he just noticed a hole in the road big enough to tear off the wheels - happened to me once, the car behind almost hit me)... Just don't do that.
But it lets you switch tabs using the scroll wheel while holding the right button anywhere, not just on the tabbar. Just as easy, if not better.
Note, that this is considered a mouse gesture in the config - if you turned mouse gestures off, you can't use it.
Exactly. An all-out patent war with IBM and others would be Bad for Business (so expect at least the issues with Linux kernel to be resolved quickly and with full cooperation from MS). The goal is not to damage any of the projects now - they're just trying to plant a fact as an axis for the FUD levers later. The SCO attack was based on accusations and failed, so the public reaction to new accusations would be dampened now. A well published fact - patent issues in OSS - would shift the initiative back to Microsoft.
I think this is a small step in a FUD campaign, a kind of damage control. The SCO FUD is grinding to a halt and likely to backfire. The reason is simple: nonobvious copyright infringement is quite hard to prove and unlikely to be ubiquitous in OSS. The outcome of the SCO case may convince users that OSS is reasonably free of IP problems. MS has to act now, proactively.
This new case will be pushed to the media. It'll linger for some time. MS won't disclose the patents too quickly, waiting for satisfactory media coverage. Finally they will, and then MS will be very reasonable - first they'll just want compensation (we can see that already), then they may even choose to donate some of the patent rights to OSS. No real harm done, end of story. But the PR effects will be great for MS:
So, just as copyright FUD started by SCO is dying, MS is preparing an exhibit A for further FUD campaign, a proof that at least patent infringement is a real problem in OSS and a basis for the line "there are IP issues in OSS and sometime, someone might go after YOU, the user, and noone will be able to help you".
In short: a lot of the patents are probably rock solid, and the fact that OSS can work around them should not make you think this case is not a serious problem. Who will invest a sum of money comparable to the MS PR budget in a media campaign showing just how easy it was to deal with the patent issues?
Free speech is a good thing, sure. But the point is: there are cases where current European laws fail. Poland has this problem with a fascist organization called (I think) Redwatch. They have a webpage listing "enemies of the race". Photos, addresses, warnings if they can be dangerous in a fight, etc. How can you get on that list? Simple - promote tolerance, be active, be a member of a homosexual organization, etc. Lately an entire group of pupils of a school landed on the list for cleaning an old jewish cemetary.
People from this list were already attacked, landed in hospitals with knife wounds. The page must disappear - but how would you go about removing it, when no law obligates the providers to do so? They removed it once, it reappeared on another server.
This is exactly the sort of problems this law is supposed to fix. However, the exact wording of any law limiting the freedom of speech is extremely important and side effects can be extremely bad. We'll see...
Thus the water moves almost as a single block, the force itself being only limited by the speed of light (ideally).
Umm... With water, I think you mean the speed of sound. That's - by definition - the speed of an acoustic (i.e. mechanical) wave, the speed at which pressure changes propagate in a given substance. The speed of sound in water is quite high, but not quite the same order of magnitude as the speed of light. An electron, with its charge, is a quite different beast.
The plug won't work on any bathtubs or sinks I've seen here. They all have a second, upper drain to prevent overflow (and make it possible to remove a plug with broken chain with a full bathtub), which doesn't have a plug nad is often shaped in a way that makes it almost impossible to cover it well.
Depends on the U-bend. At work we have a drain in the toilet floor for easier cleaning and in case of a spill (typical, isn't it). It has a very flat U-bend. In the summer it takes about two-three days for it to evaporate if the cleaners sweep the floors with too little water (ecological, right?) It often reeks, usually on Mondays. Solution - go there with a glass and pour some water.
And I use Opera 8.54. I also didn't see this tag. That's the trouble with XML as such, I think. You can put anything you want in some tag, but how can you tell if the receiver will see it, if you don't know the client software?
Slashdot isn't responsible for the limitations of a browser, true. But it is responsible for the quality of the articles (yeah, yeah, "you must be new here" - no, I'm not). It has now been pointed out, that although the humorous nature of this article was in fact sent in the feed, the form was not sufficient - multiple clients ignore the field. If something like that happens to me, I try to fix the problem, even if I feel it's not really my fault (and it does happen when you work with other people). Fault is not the issue, function is.
So, I'm convinced now that Slashdot did include the "laugh, it's funny" information in the feed, even though I have to take your word for it. Nevertheless it did not reach me, and not due to my own carelessness. So, I still think that SOME kind of notification in the RSS body is necessary. I also think that this is getting way too offtopic, so I think it's time to end this thre